Everywhere—Christ
Realization of oneness
Reverence
Every kind of life has meaning
Every life has an influence on every other kind of lifeWho wouldn’t want to experience such things? And if Houselander’s vision
seems to us today somehow exotic, it certainly wouldn’t have to early
Christians. The revelation of the Risen Christ as ubiquitous and eternal was
clearly affirmed in the Scriptures (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1)
and in the early church, when the euphoria of the Christian faith was still
creative and expanding. In our time, however, this deep mode of seeing must be
approached as something of a reclamation project. When the Western church
separated from the East in the Great Schism of 1054, we gradually lost this
profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is.
Instead, we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus,
when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself—and uncircumscribable by
human boundaries.
We might say that the door of faith closed on the broadest and most beautiful
understanding of what early Christians called the “Manifestation,” the
Epiphany, or most famously, the “Incarnation”—and also its final and full form,
which we still call the “Resurrection.” But the Eastern and Orthodox churches
originally had a much broader understanding of both of these, an insight that
we in the Western churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are now only
beginning to recognize. This is surely what John meant when he wrote in his
Gospel, “The word became flesh” itself (John 1:14), using a universal and generic
term (sarx) instead of referring to a single human body.*2 In fact, the lone word
“Jesus” is never mentioned in the Prologue! Did you ever notice that? “Jesus
Christ” is finally mentioned, but not until the second to last verse.
We cannot overestimate the damage that was done to our Gospel message
when the Eastern (“Greek”) and Western (“Latin”) churches split, beginning
with their mutual excommunication of each other’s patriarchs in 1054. We have
not known the “one, holy, undivided” church for over a thousand years.
But you and I can reopen that ancient door of faith with a key, and that key is
the proper understanding of a word that many of us use often, but often too
glibly. That word is Christ.
What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the